FreeSoftwareMagazine takes a look at Debian as a desktop system, and they conclude: "I feel that Debian Etch is as good on the desktop as it is on the server. It has a long rich history, a strong community, is amazingly stable and is a great fit for both my servers and my laptop. I urge everyone to give it a go on the desktop."

You can use debian as a desktop (even the Testing/Unstable) without any risks of rendering it unbootable if you know what are you doing (I'm using it for a year I think. I installed it as a Etch Beta1 and it's lenny now. I've just upgraded it regularly).

It's noteworthy that debian unstable is stable enough for desktop systems or multimedia enabled workstations. I've seen some 80 days on my office desktop without any glitches. I've powered it down because we had a UPS maintenance which cut all the power in the office.

Also debian can be "multimedia enabled" without any external repositories but, it needs some work...

One must remember this: "debian is a kit-car. it's default installation is just a standard distro which is well built and may be a bit ugly. it is up to users' talent and curiosity to tune, adjust and shape it to the best distro on the world for their taste." so, don't play with debian if you are:

a- Expecting it to be like ubuntu OOB
b- Expecting it to be like windows OOB
c- Expecting it to be easy to start.

If you are curious about inner workings, console, tuning a system and patient enough to install/remove packages and work with technical aspects of an OS, try debian. But beware, it may be highly addictive.

But I beg you don't bash debian or linux just beacuse it's hard, ugly on default installation or you just can't use it. debian is just a distro and we have hundreds of them for who don't like hard ones like debian or slack so, try them and we have debian because others are not for some of the debian or slack users who love to play hard.